Observation Preparation

This section mainly describes how to prepare and check NIRI observations. Setting up observing sequences at Phase II is not intuitive until one is quite experienced (and maybe even not then). Thus, the key to successful observation preparation is starting from the NIRI OT Library.

Preparing observing sequences involves much more than setting up the observation of the target; the complete observing sequences must include in addition "acquisition observations" (e.g., for finding the target and putting it in the spectrograph slit), observations of telluric standards and/or flux standards, and must include flat field calibrations and arc lamps for wavelength calibration.

The detailed list of required supporting observations for NIRI is given the Near-IR Resources section.